Page 33 of Guarded from Sabotage

I had to, though. It’s her life, and she deserves to know what kind of progress we’re making. Although I was hoping she’d go with my initial suggestion, which was that I’d meet with the team and fill her in afterwards.

Then I could give her any bad news in more comfortable surroundings. We could sit on the couch, she could wear my Army sweatshirt I sent home with her, and I could hold her hand if she got upset. If it got to be too much for her, we could takea break and I could show her around the property, meandering down the trails Niall cleared so he and Jade could walk together.

I don’t know what I was thinking. OfcourseSarah insisted on coming to the meeting. “I need to be there,” she explained. “I know you’re worried, but I can handle it.”

She can. I know she can. But it doesn’t mean I want her to.

Shit. The protectiveness I feel for Sarah just keeps getting stronger. I can’t stop thinking about how she’s feeling, if her scraped knees are healing right, if her wrists are sore from the handcuffs, if the lack of food and sleep will make her sick…

I’ve always been a caregiver. It’s in my blood—my dad was a paramedic, my mom a nurse—and I’ve spent most of my life protecting people in one way or another. But this is different. With Sarah, it’s not enough to know she’s being taken care of.

Iwant to be the one taking care of her.

Which makes it so much harder to focus on leading this meeting instead of sitting beside Sarah and holding her hand, reassuring her, and doing whatever I can to erase the worried look off her face.

Matt’s tapping away on his laptop while we wait for Leo, one of my former teammates and the Sleepy Hollow branch’s resident tech guy, to join the meeting remotely. Back from his trip with Georgia, he’s been working with Matt to help investigate Sarah’s case.

“Leo’s just joining now,” Matt announces as he lifts his gaze to the projection screen on the wall. Glancing down the table at Sarah, he explains, “Since we’ve both been working on your case, I wanted Leo to be here, too. At least virtually.”

She gives him a tiny smile. “Thanks for doing this, Matt. Dante said you’ve been working every day on my case, and I really appreciate it.”

His cheeks go slightly pink. “You don’t have to thank me. Anything I can do to help—” He stops as Leo appears on the screen.

Leo’s gaze moves around the conference table and his lips lift. “Hey, guys. Good to see you.”

“You too,” I reply with a quick lift of my chin. “How’s Georgia doing?”

His face brightens. “She’s good. Now that the morning sickness has passed, she’s been feeling much better. Although—” His mouth twitches. “She keeps complaining that she’s enormous and can’t possibly get any bigger. But we still have over two months to go, so…”

Sarah smiles at him. “I bet she looks gorgeous, as usual.”

Affection softens his voice. “She does. Radiant, really.” After a brief pause, he adds, “Georgia wanted me to say hello for her. And that she’s thinking about you.”

After another minute or so of small talk—how big Clara has gotten, the upcoming wedding of our Green Beret teammate, Rylan, and how crazy business has been—we get to the actual reason we’re here.

Matt starts it off, saying, “Well. We’ve found some information. It’s good and bad, depending on how you look at it.”

Sarah’s foot starts jittering under the table and her hands clench together in her lap.

“Not bad, exactly,” Leo adds. “Just… it makes things more complicated. But it’s not really unexpected, considering everything that’s happened to Sarah so far.”

I lean forward, resting my arms on the table. Glancing between Matt and Leo, I ask, “What do you mean?”

Matt exchanges a look with Leo, then says, “Okay. Good news is, we’ve found out quite a bit abouthowthis was done. Which means we have more to work from. We can eliminate a lot ofsuspects based on the level of skill necessary to access Sarah’s information.”

Xavier’s forehead furrows in confusion. “And for the non-techies in here? Can you explain?”

Leo nods. “Based on what we’ve found, whoever’s behind this is very skilled. A run-of-the-mill hacker isn’t going to have the necessary skills. So we can cross a number of our possibles off the list.”

“Our hacker used VPN chaining to cover their tracks,” Matt says. “Which means they’re routing everything through two anonymous servers instead of just one, which is what inexperienced hackers typically do.”

“They also hacked into some of the companies in order to steal Sarah’s information,” Leo adds. “We’re working to trace access, but since it requires us to hack in as well, it takes a bit more time.”

Matt glances at Sarah, his expression turning apologetic. “I also found a keystroke logger on your laptop. Which would enable the hacker to gain access to your accounts, personal information?—”

“But I have it all password protected,” Sarah interjects. “And I use different passwords and two-factor authentication. I’m really careful.”

“I’m sure you are,” Matt replies soothingly. “Which is another reason why we know this person is very skilled.”

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